


time flies like a poison dart

by skatingsplits



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, and her very fucked up family, my favourite seriously repressed witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 09:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16762456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatingsplits/pseuds/skatingsplits
Summary: This particular memory is crystal clear. Five years old, she's wrapped up in a blanket so cosy that the sharp autumn wind might as well be a gentle summer breeze, squeezed tightly between her mother and brother so that the cold doesn't even have a chance to pinch anything but her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Not that she'd have let on if it had; even at the age of five, Zelda has learnt that good girls don't cry or complain.





	time flies like a poison dart

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I banged this out in an afternoon because I have a lot of emotions about Zelda Spellman so forgive me if it's technically less than perfect.  
> 2\. The title comes from A Series of Unfortunate Events because apparently I don't love anything as much as I love fucked up family dynamics.

Zelda has lived a long, interesting life of infinite variety. She’s forgotten more about her early years than most people ever experience in a lifetime but some things remain very vivid. This particular memory is crystal clear. Five years old, she's wrapped up in a blanket so cosy that the sharp autumn wind might as well be a gentle summer breeze, squeezed tightly between her mother and brother so that the cold doesn't even have a chance to pinch anything but her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Not that she'd have let on if it had; even at the age of five, Zelda has learnt that good girls don't cry or complain. Besides, the baby in her mother's arms is doing enough complaining for all of them combined. Zelda is sandwiched in too closely to be able to observe her little sister properly but Hilda has cried so frequently in the six weeks since she's been born that Zelda can already identify this particular wail as being one of physical discomfort. Their mother must surely know it too but doesn't seem inclined to do anything about it.

Antoinette Spellman was a gifted witch and a dutiful parent but whatever warmth she'd been able to produce had largely been reserved for her husband and only sparingly dosed out to her children. Even with the benefit of hindsight, Zelda finds this perfectly natural. A mother's job is to supply her offspring with the resources they need to make their way in the world, equip them with skills and strengths that will allow them to flourish; unnecessary displays of affection and effective parenting do not go hand in hand. It's only occasionally that she allows herself to ruminate on how different her life might be if Antoinette had ever expressed any emotion stronger than cool approval to her children. But those are flights of fancy, and the memory is cold, hard fact.

  
Instead of soothing her baby daughter's cries, Antoinette casts a little charm to muffle them, which seems only logical to Zelda. There's no time to fuss over the baby when Daddy could arrive home any moment, expecting to see them all at their best. Without ever being told, Zelda knows that Mother and Father are dissatisfied with Greendale. It’s the only home Zelda’s ever known but she’s heard her parents wistfully reminisce about England, lament the laxness of their new coven, criticise the cramped quarters of the house. Father spends his days and many of his nights busy at the Council, arriving home tired and cross more often than not. Mother has grown increasingly irritable with her children since Hilda was born, only to put on the best display of domestic bliss that she can muster every evening for her husband. And anything Zelda can do to complete that picture, she’ll do it. Her mother has only recently begun to school her in spells and potions but for as long as she can remember, Antoinette has taught her about a different kind of magic. How to paint a smile on her face when she feels like screaming and weeping, how to do as she’s told even if it’s in direct opposition to her own instincts, how to remain cool and indifferent in response to even the most vexing situation. It’s less practical than the curses and hexes Edward is already learning but Zelda knows that it’s no less important.

That’s why she doesn’t say a word about not being able to breathe as she’s crushed between Mother and Edward, doesn’t say a word at all but sits very still with a smile on her face, nothing indicating the way her heart starts beating faster as Richard Spellman comes around the corner and up the driveway.

  
As her father mounts the steps up to the porch, his face blank of expression, Zelda can hardly hear for the sound of her own pulse thundering through her head. It’s the same every evening; her whole world seems to hang in the balance as she tries desperately to judge whether the man arriving home is the amiable, happy Father who will kiss his wife and pet his children or the exasperated, exhausted Father who will shut himself in his study and leave them with Mother and her fragile smile and glassy eyes. When Richard reaches the bench and smiles at his two elder children almost absent-mindedly before redirecting his attention to his wife, Zelda is so relieved that she physically exhales. For today, the test is over and she’s passed, they all have.

She watches as her parents make their way into the house, engrossed in conversation that she doesn't understand, the baby still visibly unhappy in their mother’s arms. Antoinette may not exude emotional warmth but Zelda misses her mother's body heat now it's just her and Edward alone on the bench, the cast-iron cold beneath her legs. Her brother is eight, three years older than Zelda, and the centre of her world in every regard. If she craves her parents’ approval because the alternative coldness is unbearable, she craves Edward’s approval because of the warmth it brings. In contrast with herself, Edward is quick to smile and laugh with anyone he comes across but there are special smiles and jokes he shares only with Zelda and she hoards them jealously like a dragon with its treasure. She’s terrified of the day when Edward will have to go away, make other friends; terrified of Hilda growing up and claiming his attention; terrified of being left alone without Edward as a buffer between her and their parents. But for now they sit together in silence on the porch, relishing the peace and quiet, however inconstant it might prove to be.

X

It seems like no time at all before Zelda is sitting on the porch all by herself. The routine has faded into oblivion as the children have gotten older, Antoinette seemingly realising that no amount of picture-perfect tableaux can paper over so wide a gap in the fabric of a family, but Zelda clings on. The porch is the scene of her triumphs, a reminder of all the times her father came home smiling, something that hardly ever happens any more. In fact, it’s getting rarer and rarer that he comes home at all but Zelda isn’t waiting for him. She’s thirteen, thin and angular and impatient; impatient for her life to start, impatient to be taken seriously and, right now, impatient for her brother to get home. It’s a month since Edward’s baptism and it’s been a month of waiting. Zelda doesn’t wait on the porch every day, that wouldn’t be seemly, but even when she’s drilling away at her Latin in the schoolroom or playing at summoning spells with Hilda in the garden, she’s alert for the sound of footsteps in the driveway or the slam of the front door.

  
Today, though, keeping her attention on anything had proved impossible. Even experimenting on Hilda with her first attempt at a concealment draft had only been fun for five minutes. The truth is, with every day her brother spends at the Unseen Academy, Zelda becomes more and more convinced that he’s never going to come back. Every time he’s even a minute later than he should be, she persuades herself that he’s either dead in a dungeon somewhere or he’s been entranced by his new life to such an extent that he’s forgotten all about them and they’ll never see him again. While she won’t admit to herself that she thinks the first option might be preferable, she certainly won't admit any of her fears to her sister or her mother, skilfully avoids questions about why she's more likely to her found outside in the cold than in the domesticity of the kitchen or the schoolroom. Her vocabulary is extensive but not quite extensive enough to articulate the sheer terror that grips her every evening as it begins to get dark.

  
Right now it's still light outside so she spots him the moment he turns onto the estate but immediately diverts her attention back onto the book in her lap, not looking up again until her brother is right in front of her.

  
‘How was it?’ she says as though she doesn’t really care about the answer. She knows she isn’t fooling him but she puts on the pretence all the same, as though she isn’t dying to hear every detail of his day, isn’t fiercely jealous of him for all the life he’s getting to experience and isn’t equally jealous of all those other witches and warlocks who've stolen Edward's time from her.

  
‘Fine’ is all he says, smiling fondly down at her when she glares, too proud to ask him to elaborate. Luckily, he does so anyway, tugging on her hair as he sits down next to her and begins a long monologue about his lessons, his professors, his friends, to which only half of her is listening. It’s fascinating, genuinely, to a girl who’s spent most of her life in the same small American town being home-schooled with her sister but the other half of her is far more focused on the fact that Edward is here, that all the fascinating new adventures a boy could dream of haven’t dragged him away completely. Her book discarded, Zelda sits cross-legged on the bench, revelling in Edward’s stories and Edward’s presence and Edward, here and in front of her and, for now, hers.

X

With one thing and another, it’s been a long time since she’s been sitting here, waiting for Edward to come home. Once her training as a midwife was complete, she’d set off on a jaunt around Europe that was meant to be a year but had turned into ten. Ever since returning to Greendale, Zelda has thrown herself into making her life as full as possible. The spectre of her mother’s restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot looms over her and she knows that it would completely overwhelm her if she let it, so she simply doesn’t let it. She’s always been fiercely devoted but now she’s plunged herself headlong into the Church of Night, socially and religiously; barely a day passes when she isn’t involved in some parishional event or organisation. But the insidious feeling of restlessness had begun to creep in at the edges of her mind so in an attempt to stem the flow, she’d arrived home one day with a stack of papers almost the size of her torso and informed Hilda that they were going to open a funeral home in the disused basement. Her sister wouldn’t have stood a chance in the face of Zelda’s determination regardless of her own opinions on the matter but as serendipity would have it, Hilda was enthused and the Spellman Mortuary had opened its doors a month ago. They had no need of the income but Zelda worked like a woman trying to avoid the breadline and between her new establishment and her satanic duties, Edward would beat her to the dinner table more often than not.

  
Not today, though. Today, Zelda had barely been able to do an hour of accounts before discarding them in an exasperated muddle. She’d stalked around the house like an irate panther, chain-smoking and getting in Hilda’s way to such an extent that her little sister had eventually chivvied her outside to wait for their brother like she’s a little girl again. A part of Zelda vaguely resents Hilda for knowing that the porch is where she wants to be, just as part of her is personally offended that Hilda isn’t nervous enough to come and wait with her. But another part of her is grateful that her sister has given her the licence she’d needed to fret, and hugely thankful that she hadn’t joined her. Hilda comes to Black Mass every week, she says her prayers at the appropriate times and has read the appropriate texts but she isn’t _devoted_ , not like her siblings. If (praise Lucifer, if) their brother is going to come home from the conclave with the news that he’s the new High Priest of the Church of Night, Hilda does not deserve to share that moment with them.

It’s theirs, Zelda and Edward’s, it’s what they’ve dreamed about since either of them even knew how to dream. Their father’s frustration at never being selected had been a heavy, pulsing vein running through the body of their childhood and although their father has been dead for decades, both of them have clung onto the need to alleviate that frustration, even by proxy. For a while, Zelda had dreamt of filling the position herself; she hadn’t often played pretend as a child but when she had, the figments of her imagination had all worshipped her as High Priestess. It hadn’t taken long, however, for her to realise that without unimaginable changes to the coven’s foundation, this dream would never come to fruition. So since her girlhood, she’s channelled her ambition and her energy into her brother, as though he didn’t already have more than enough of his own. The wait this afternoon has been interminable but every ounce of nerves and frustration will have been more than worth it if the smoke has burned purple for her brother.

  
It’s dark but she’s so finely attuned to Edward’s shape, his appearance, his presence that she knows he’s arrived long before he reaches the creaking wooden steps. Putting out her still burning cigarette, she stands, feeling the pulse tick in her throat as she dampens down any show of the anxiety she feels. He’s getting closer but his face is hidden until he’s practically at the front door and the light hits him. Praise Satan, he’s smiling. She releases the breath she hadn’t realised she was holding and takes another, a deep, shuddering gasp as he wraps his arms around her in a tight, victorious embrace. Tears fall from her eyes unbidden and neither of them speak as they cling to each other. Zelda silently wills her brother to not break away, knowing that when they go inside, this sacred moment will fall away to mundane, commonplace celebration that can’t possibly do justice to its absolute momentousness. Eventually, of course, he does. Edward laughs at her tear-stained cheeks, brushing away a lingering droplet with the pad of his thumb.

  
‘Proud of me, Zee?’ he asks, as though he doesn’t know the answer in his bones, as though words could possibly do justice to the overwhelming emotion coursing through her. She just squeezes his hand as tightly as she can, revelling in knowing that he craves her approval as much as she does his, and lets him lead her inside to the warmth of the kitchen and the warmth of Hilda and Ambrose, leaving her cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray on the cold porch.

X

Normally, Hilda doesn't encroach on Zelda’s hiding place like this. Even in the summer months, there’s usually a chill in the air in Greendale, and Hilda has never been able to stand the cold; certainly, she doesn’t relish the way the wind whips around her face like Zelda does, doesn’t take pride in being able to stand icy blasts without a shiver. Hilda is warmth in every way imaginable, most of them ways Zelda couldn’t even attempt to emulate, which is why it’s so surprising that she’s currently braving the brisk September wind to sit next to Zelda on the iron bench, cuddled up tight against her sister in an attempt to sponge some body heat. Although Zelda supposes that today is a day for all things unimaginable.

  
She’d certainly never imagined in her wildest dreams that any relative of hers would be attending a mortal school, much less that she’d be waiting for the relative in question with an ache in her heart and anxiety spiking her brain. But here she is, unable to concentrate on anything other than the fact that her niece has spent all day in the company of mortals and should be back in the next three minutes. Zelda is caught between two twin terrors; the fear that her niece will come home tear-stained and miserable, cursing her aunts for their neglect in sending her off into the belly of the beast; and the fear that Sabrina will return bouncy and smiling, full of the joys of the mortal world and desperate to return. Guilt pricks over her like a million tiny pins as she tries not to think about the fact that she’d vastly prefer the former. Wiping Sabrina’s tears away and staying by her bedside until she falls asleep are no price to pay for keeping her niece ensconced away from all things mortal for just a while longer.

  
She'd known the instant Edward had announced his intention to marry a mortal that there would be nothing but trouble, but she hadn't for an instant imagined that she'd spend the next sixteen years of her life living in constant fear of the mortal world's pull on her niece. The world of mortals had stolen Edward from her; first bit by bit, as he was slowly pulled towards Diana, and then permanently, irretrievably. And every day since has been a constant battle with Sabrina’s mortal half, with Hilda as her unwilling lieutenant and the house as their fortress. She’d flatly refused to consider sending the girl to a mortal elementary school, hadn’t even lowered herself to discuss it, and Sabrina had been young enough that Zelda hadn’t had to justify her decision. In the last few years, though, Sabrina has laid siege to her aunts, begging on a daily basis to be sent to mortal school and escape the schoolroom where Zelda and Hilda had spent their youths in the manner of a normal mortal child begging its parents for a puppy. Zelda had held firm at first but the defences she’d mounted against just such an attack have gradually crumbled in the face of Sabrina’s teary, Edward-esque eyes.

They’d crumbled grudgingly, however, to the point that even this morning she’d refused to come with Hilda and drop Sabrina off for her first day at school. Her family had tried to convince her that she was missing out on an important tradition but when she’d nastily pointed out that such a tradition normally takes place when the child is four instead of twelve and that if Sabrina still needed her aunts to escort her, she probably wasn’t mature enough to be going anywhere, they’d backed down. Sabrina had still flung her arms around her before leaving and Zelda had clung like a limpet to the memory of that embrace all day.

  
When Hilda had returned, Zelda had pretended that she didn’t see her sister’s mascara-stained cheeks but she’s been a little softer than usual to her sister all day. Finally, Hilda can understand something of the feelings to which Zelda is a slave; that someone she cherishes might prefer something or someone else. Hilda hasn’t articulated these feelings but Zelda can read them radiating off her sister like large-print type in an open book and she’s proved right when Hilda stands up the second she sees Sabrina turn the corner, setting off down the path without a word to Zelda. She meets their niece halfway down the drive, chattering away nineteen to the dozen and making it quite obvious to the girl that she’s been wound up tighter than a spring since the moment Sabrina had stepped out of the house eight hours ago. Her sister isn’t used to playing the waiting game, will probably never have to progress beyond the amateur leagues, but Zelda is a grand master and she knows far better than to let on that she’s even been playing at all.

  
‘How was it?’ she says when Sabrina is close enough to hear, ignoring the way her brain tries to flood itself with memories of the hundred other times she’d sat in this exact same place asking the exact same question, feeling the exact same fear grip her entire body. Sabrina smiles down at her, expressing neither the distrustful sorrow or the buoyant exuberance that Zelda has spent all day imagining.

  
‘It was fine, Aunt Zee’ the girl reaches down to press a kiss to Zelda’s cheek and for a brief, rapturous moment, Zelda thinks she’s going to curl up by her side and confide in her, pour over every detail of her day like Edward used to do with Zelda as his rapt, one-person audience. She doesn’t, though, but straightens up again and follows her other aunt inside, smile still present on her face. And that’s fine. Zelda knows she can’t expect Sabrina to be a carbon copy of her father, shouldn’t expect it. The bond that Zelda and Edward had will never be recreated and trying to shape Sabrina in his image will only end in heartache for both of them. Zelda can't stop herself hoping that as time goes on, Sabrina will turn to her as a mentor in the ways of Night, just as she had turned to Edward, but for now, it’s enough that Sabrina is inside, safe, here, and Zelda will face hell and high water to make sure she stays that way.

  
X

  
Of all the nights Zelda has spent on this porch, very few of them have been spent waiting for Hilda. Even on the rare occurrences when Hilda has spent the evening out without her sister, it’s been even rarer for Zelda to feel the need to wait for her (that isn’t strictly true; it’s been even rarer for Zelda to act on the need she feels to wait for her). But this evening is, as Hilda had said before leaving the house in her best dress and far too much lipstick, a special occasion. Her little sister had gone off into the sunset with her awful mortal boyfriend, and Zelda knows enough about sex and enough about Hilda to understand exactly why this evening is so special for her sister. She’d been glowing with buoyant anticipation all day, and if it hadn’t been for the constant presence of Sabrina, Zelda would have made sure to dampen that excitement down to a damp squib. Lucifer knows, losing one’s virginity is nothing to get excited about. She’d got her own out of the way practically the moment her Dark Baptism was over and she’s always wondered why Hilda never had. Her sister might not exactly be Audrey Hepburn but she’s pretty, she’s warm, she’s endearing; someone, sometime must have wanted her, surely. And now she’s going to squander her virgin blood on the bed of some two-bit mortal huckster who probably wouldn’t know how to please a woman if he had a step-by-step illustrated instruction manual.

  
She wonders why she's the only Spellman left who hasn’t succumbed to the squalid charms of the mortal world. Edward had betrayed his family for it, abandoned his principles only to be tempted to his eventual death by Diana’s mortal cunt. Sabrina has been engulfed by it, too immersed to even care about the significance of her own Dark Baptism. And now even Hilda has been seduced by it. Seduced by a gauche, disgusting man who wouldn’t deserve to touch her sister if he crawled on his belly through the fires of hell for a thousand years. Jealousy plucks away at her as though her very entrails are the strings of a harp and Zelda processes this emotion the only way she knows how; by turning it into black, burning anger, churning away inside her.

She’s leaning against the house’s front doorframe, too tense and too furious to sit still. Zelda has been torturing herself for the last few hours with the thought that Hilda might not be coming home, that she might never be coming home again. Maybe she’ll stay in whatever tawdry apartment that man possesses; Zelda can picture it, linoleum and loud prints, thrift shop furniture and pathetic film posters on the walls. If that’s what Hilda prefers to her own home, her own sister, then she’s welcome to it.

  
But no; just as the sun starts to peek through the dismal grey sky, Zelda is greeted with the sight of Hilda coming round the corner, a laughable imitation of their father coming home from work that would make Zelda cackle if she didn’t feel so sick. She feels even sicker when her sister gets closer and she sees the smile spread wide across that familiar face.

  
‘Have fun?’ she makes her voice an exaggeratedly mocking, licentious drawl, not letting on that only the cigarette in her hand keeping her from digging her nails into her palm hard enough to bleed. Hilda’s warm smile fades only a little; Zelda’s tone may be biting but her words haven’t provoked outright warfare yet.

  
‘Yes, thank you. Doctor Cee and I-’

  
‘Oh, I think I know exactly what you were doing with “Doctor Cee”’ Zelda spits out the repulsive creature’s name like it’s venom in her mouth, hating the way it even feels on her tongue ‘You reek of it, Hilda, like a ten cent whore who can’t even clean up after herself.’ Never mind the countless evenings over the years Zelda’s come home wrecked and ravaged, never mind the fact that she couldn’t normally give a damn about other people’s sexual activities, never mind that Hilda looks happier than Zelda’s seen her in months. This type of happiness is not what Hilda should be feeling, it shouldn’t have been put there by a greasy mortal’s heavy, pawing hand.

  
‘For Satan’s sake, Zelda’ Hilda doesn’t even sound angry, just exhausted. ‘Why do you have to do this? Every single time something good happens to me that doesn’t revolve around you, you ruin it. Why can’t you, for once, just for once be happy for me?’

  
There’s so much she could say. _Because you're a traitor to the path of Night. Because nobody should be making you happy but me. Because I can’t bear the thought of that man with his hands on you. Because you’re going to leave me. Because you’ve already left._

  
But she doesn’t, in the end, say any of it. She just lets her cigarette fall to the ground, grinds it into dust with her heel as though it’s the source of all her trouble and sits back down, the bench cold against her bare legs under her nightdress. Hilda obviously hadn’t expected an answer; she doesn’t look at Zelda again, just pushes through the door in a silent fury that makes Zelda feel just as sick as her absence had and leaves her alone on the porch, exactly where she belongs.

X

It's not long after she disgraces herself with Hilda that Zelda gets rid of the bench. She's the only person who ever uses it now, she doesn't think the others even realise that it's gone. Not that they're around often enough to give them the opportunity to notice and that's really why she does it. Normally when Zelda waits on the porch, she tortures herself by imagining nobody is coming to meet her. She's sat here in nervous anticipation more times than she's had hot meals, safe to taunt herself with self-inflicted fright because she'd been sure deep down that it wasn't true. And sure enough, somebody had always come. Even if they were furious or exhausted or distracted, the Spellman family had always come home to roost and until very recently, Zelda had been sure they always would. But it isn't safe to imagine anymore, she won't let her mind even skim over the possibility that one day she'll find herself waiting in vain.

Because it's more than possible, it's inevitable and if she allows herself to think about it for more than a second, Zelda will tumble into the abyss she's been dancing on the edge of for so long. And Satan knows, she's too much of a glutton for punishment to leave herself the temptation of doing exactly that.

  
She doesn't miss it much, in the end. Zelda has always been fond of her worldly possessions, attached too much importance to them maybe, but she doesn't need the physical reminder to remember what this particular item had meant to her. She needs no reminder of her mother and father when she carries them with her every day, every time she arches an icy eyebrow instead of bursting into tears. She needs no reminder of Hilda when her sister still manages to be at breakfast nearly every morning, cheerful and energetic and making Zelda's heart ache just at much as she does when she's absent. And she needs no reminder of Edward when, after sixteen years, her heart still jumps a little every time she sees those familiar eyes in Sabrina's face. Whether it's for the best or not, Zelda can't make up her mind. After all even though her perch is gone, she still finds herself waiting, more sure every day that it won't be long before nobody comes. 


End file.
